INTUITIVE EATING FOR PERMANENT WEIGHT LOSS- YES!

The following is the transcript from this week's YouTube Video.

June 7, 2022

Are you sick of diet culture but

you still want to lose weight? Stick with me.

I'll show you how.

My name is Meg Meranus.

I was a heavy duty Dieter from the

age of about 14 or 15 to 40.

And in the year 2000, I said I'm

done and I became an intuitive eater.

And it was one of the best things I've ever done.

And I'm here to show you how to do that as

well so you can get and stay at your happy weight.

And that second part, the staying at your happy

weight, is the thing that diet culture just ignores.

Like, that's not important.

But of course it is because you've been on diets

and you've lost weight, but you've gained it back.

Right.

And you don't want to do that anymore.

So again, stick with me and I'll

show you how to do this.

So the biggest concept that I think you need to

start with when you're an intuitive eater is that your

body is your guide, it's your best friend.

And the two voices that you're

going to really focus in on.

I mean, there's lots more that

your body has to tell you.

But the two things, most particularly with becoming

an intuitive eater, are hunger and cravings.

Now when I say hunger, I mean hunger

and the absence of hunger and then cravings.

What food is your body asking you for?

And I know you don't think that your

body is smart enough to tell you that.

Of course you don't.

And diet culture loves that.

You think that because then you spend money on their

programs, but you don't need to do that anymore.

And very briefly, I'm telling you, I was in the diet

industry for a year, like when I was 22 years old.

I worked for nutritionist when I was in school, and

I saw from the inside out, and I quit very

soon after I started because it was disgusting.

They're after your money.

They're not after making you a slim

person for the rest of your life.

They're after making you a customer

for the rest of your life.

And Nutrism isn't the only one.

They all are.

They want you owning that app and paying a monthly

fee, or they want you to buy their food.

It's all the same.

But I digress because I don't like

to bring all that negative energy.

But I just want to make sure

that you understand that diets and diet

culture have corrupted your relationship with food.

And eating not helped you.

Okay, so again, the two things that you're going to

really key into here are your hunger and your cravings.

And I'm going to talk about hunger the most today because

hunger is kind of like the elephant in the room.

No one wants to be hungry, diet or manage your hunger.

On this diet, you don't even get hungry.

You do not want to lose your hunger.

Hunger is an amazing gift from Mother

Nature as long as you have food. Okay?

Now, obviously, we're very lucky if

having food is not a problem.

We have too much food, right?

Well, we're very lucky.

But let's key in on that thing where hunger

is a gift when you can afford to eat,

because hunger is an opportunity for extreme pleasure.

It's not something to shy away from.

It's something to look forward to, to let brew.

I like to say that, like when I feel myself

starting to get hungry, like right now, I'm a little

bit hungry, but I'm not rushing off to eat or

eating before I do this video or something, because I'm

just going to let that brew for a little bit

because when it gets stronger, your hunger sauce, right.

Can you imagine that when you have a plate

of food in front of you, if you have

hunger, it's like putting an amazing sauce on it

because hunger makes everything taste better. Right?

So I don't want to eat when I first feel that

hunger because I want to get the hunger sauce going so

that whatever I have, it's going to be extra amazing.

And when you've been an intuitive eater for a

while and you really keyed into your hunger, particularly

you do not want to eat without hunger.

Can you imagine your life, how your life would be, how

your relationship with food and eating would be if you no

longer wanted to eat when you were not hungry?

Yes, that happens. And it is.

It's wonderful because it changes everything.

When you have no desire to eat when you're

not hungry, that means that you're only eating with

hunger and that means you're eating less.

But when I say that, I can

feel you go, oh, no, eating less. Yeah.

But when you can always eat when

you're hungry, it becomes so much easier.

It's normalized, right.

Because right now, eating without hunger

is normalized because you should eat

breakfast and you should do this.

That whole slogan about breakfast being the

most important meal of the day, by

the way, was a marketing thing, right? It's not true.

It's not the most important meal of the day.

The most important meal of the day for

you is when you're hungry, whenever that is.

And I do get a lot of questions like, oh,

well, but I have a work schedule and all that.

Yeah, I know. I do, too.

And I did when I started this

and I had three little kids. I get it.

You can make this work.

If you can go to the store and get all this keto

food and put it in your refrigerator and never have a carb,

then you can do this or whatever diet you've done.

You have to manage it a

little bit, especially in the beginning.

But you'll get good at this and you'll be

able to anticipate your hunger a little bit.

You don't want to anticipate it in the sense

that schedule that you're going to eat at 02:00.

But you'll get the flow of your own rhythm with

food and you'll be able to manage very well.

In the beginning. It's an adjustment.

But hey, when you leave diet culture behind and

you come over to this happy land of intuitive

eating, that little bit of effort you have to

put to making sure that you have what you

need for your hunger, that's a small thing.

I will say that one of the

things just this is another aside.

But when you're trying to get acquainted with hunger, it can

be a feeling of, OK, shoot, I didn't eat when I

thought I was hungry, and now I'm stuck here and I

can't eat and I just feel really bad.

And that kind of freaks you out because

that feeling of hunger is your body has

no idea why you didn't feed it. Right.

So it can feel like an emergency to your body if

you're really not eating when you really have strong hunger.

So one of the things in our workbook, I

say one of the three things you do every

day is you make sure you have food with

you at all times, especially in the beginning.

But I've been doing this for 22 years.

I always have food with me, like in my

purse, in my car, in my desk, because I

don't ever want to get stuck with that.

I want to wait for hunger.

And let's say I was doing this video right now

and then all this, and I said I didn't eat

before this, even though I'm kind of hungry.

And then let's say all of a sudden I

had to just leave my house for whatever reason.

Oh, I got to get to the post

office or whatever, do something before something closes.

And so I ran out and I'm in my car

and I'm getting really hungry and I don't feel well.

You want to take care of yourself.

So I always have food with me just like anything.

It can be a granola bar or protein bar,

whatever you like, whatever makes you feel good.

When I say protein bar, I'm not saying eat protein.

I'm just saying whatever makes you feel good for me.

Like cookies, I don't know, just

whatever keeps well in my car.

Sometimes I have nuts out there.

What do I have right now?

Yeah, I have this little cookie pack right now.

You just have something with you to take the edge off

hunger to calm your body down until you can have an

eating experience that you really enjoy because you don't want to

get to a hunger point where you just feel awful and

stressed out, because hunger does make you stressed out because your

body is going, hey, what's going on? I need something.

And if you ignore that, that's not good.

Of course, dieting teaches you to

do that, and that's not good.

So our whole goal here with intuitive eating.

And using intuitive eating for weight loss is to

get acquainted with what your hunger feels like.

Don't fear it, don't try to overmanage it.

Don't try to reject it.

Don't try to control it.

Let your hunger bubble up and

go, wow, that feels like hunger.

Okay, what does my hunger feel like?

Okay, well, today my mouth was wetting

when I even thought of food.

So I thought, well, I'm probably pretty hungry.

And then I went and took a

bite and it was just so good.

And I felt better.

Okay, so that was hunger.

But you could Conversely say, yeah,

I feel like kind of fatigued.

I think I might be hungry.

Then you eat something and it

really didn't do the trick.

Or maybe you're tired.

I mean, these simple kindergarten concepts we

have to relearn because the diet industry

trained them out of us.

But you can do it.

And it's just taking the time and effort to disengage

your diet mentality and reengage with your body, your intuition,

the way that your body wants you to eat.

And your body will get to a point when you're an

intuitive eater, when you use every sense you have, your eyes,

your nose, even your ears to decide every sense you have,

touch everything to know what you should eat.

I opened the refrigerator when I was a diet.

I never did this.

I would just go, okay, what looks good?

And your body just goes, that's it.

And then you get really good

insight from your body that way.

And I know some of you guys who may be heavy

watching this going, My body is never going to do that.

Please give your body a chance to

show you how smart it is.

I didn't think mine would either, but it does.

It's such a wonderful communication and think if you're

not listening to your body, nobody else can.

So you might as well step up to the

plate, so to speak, and give your body a

chance to show you how smart it is.

And for me, saying that you use hunger

to lose weight here, it's like this.

I call it riding the neutral edge.

So when you're hungry, your body sends

you an initial hunger signal, probably.

I mean, we're all different.

I'm kind of talking about my experience, but

I've worked with enough people over the years.

This is pretty universal, but you

might be a little different.

So allow for that.

So you're sitting there and you go, oh, I

kind of feel hungry, like I did right before

I did this video, but I'm fine.

I'm just going to let that bubble up and I'm

going to wait until it's really kind of bugging me

that I'm hungry, like I can't do anything.

And then I know I'll have hunger sauce and

the food that I eat will be amazing.

Then when you're eating, you don't

eat until your body says enough.

That's called being full.

That's called overeating.

You don't want to put your body in a

position that it has to tell you to stop.

You want to eat until hunger

is gone, until you're in neutral. Okay.

And language is important here because I

use the word satiety a lot.

Satiety just means that you're satiated.

You don't have a need.

You're satisfied.

Full to me means going beyond that.

But use the words that work for

you because they're nuances to our language.

So use the words that work for you.

For me, it's satiety being in neutral. I'm not hungry.

I'm not full.

I'm in neutral.

That's where you want to live your life.

And then when you feel your hunger bubbling up.

So if this is the neutral edge, I'm trying

to say you're just like on this little riding

this edge in your life, I'm not hungry.

I'm not fully reappear.

And then you start falling over here to

hunger and your body sends you some hunger

signals, like whatever they are for you.

And it's your job to figure that out.

And there's help on our website

to help figure that out.

But you can imagine what that is. Okay.

I think that's hunger, and then you back into it.

I ate something. Did I feel better? Yes. Okay.

It was hunger. Right?

And then when you get good at this, you say,

well, I am hungry, and I'm going to respect my

hunger because you must listen to your hunger.

You don't want to get hungry.

You don't want to get to feeling poorly, but you

don't rush to the refrigerator the second you feel it.

You let it kind of go until

you know you have good hunger sauce.

And then you eat and it's amazing.

And you bring yourself right back up

to neutral and you stay there.

Now, when you're new at this,

you're going to eat beyond that.

Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

This is not something you're doing for the next year.

This is you for the rest of your life, and

you will get better and better and better at it.

I would say when I first started doing this

in the year 2000, am I a better intuitive

eater in 2022 than I was in 2004?

Let's say, yeah, probably you just get stronger and

stronger and stronger, but you make such huge gains

quickly when you start paying attention to your body.

And it's a beautiful thing.

It's like a self fulfilling.

It's a wheel that turns.

It gets better and better and stronger.

Dieting to me always felt like I'm being a diet.

And then I cracked being a diet and cracking.

This isn't like that.

This is smooth.

And the gears get smoother and

smoother and easier and easier.

So you'll never look back.

You'll never look back.

But again, the point of today's video, and I'm

bringing this up today because I know on the

Today show this morning they talked about intuitive eating

and everyone is so afraid to say intuitive eating

can be used for weight loss.

And my reaction to that is that, well, if you say

that intuitive eating is not for weight loss, you leave no

good options for people who do want to lose weight.

So you push them towards diet culture, right?

If someone really wants to lose

weight, they're going to try diet.

They're going to do a diet.

If you're saying intuitive eating is for weight

loss, Intuitive eating is for weight loss.

You manage your hunger a little differently when

you're doing intuitive eating and you don't want

to lose weight, you don't ride that neutral

edge quite as long, obviously. Right.

And it's just when you want to lose

weight, you have to tolerate a little bit

of that edge a little bit longer.

And in my book, in the workbook, I'm constantly

saying you have to respect hunger as much as

non hunger and that when you don't eat when

you're hungry, it's just as bad.

I mean, it's just disconnecting as when

you do eat when you are.

But I'm not talking about I'm talking about when

you just give yourself a little time to just

feel that hunger and don't panic and don't be

afraid and eat when you're hungry.

But just don't rush.

Just let it brute get that hunger sauce strong, enjoy

your food and then get on with your day.

It's a great way to eat and live.

And again, to lose weight, you have to eat less, right?

But this is how you eat less for the

rest of your life and you do it happily.

It doesn't feel like deprivation.

It does not feel like deprivation.

Okay, so you can do this.

And again, it is the way out.

I promise, my friends, it is the way out of

diet culture and the way into your happy weight, the

weight that you want to be that you decide.

I'm not telling anyone to lose weight and just stay there

for the rest of your life and do other stuff with

all the energy that you used to spend on what is

the next great diet you're going to do?